ARCHITECTURE; 2005 -- A USER'S MANUAL

By JULIE V. IOVINE

Published: January 6, 2005

If what surfaced last year is any indication of the future, cool, modern interiors will develop warmer, more emotional textures. Bargains will appear in blue-chip collecting. (Look to Milan instead of Paris.) Gardens and parks will showcase a new, wilder look. And buyers of traditional furniture will find quality that they never could have afforded 10 years ago.

For some homeowners, expedience is becoming as important as style. As a result choices that are affordable, even truck-able, are the trend in residential architecture for 2005, as a new generation of architects faces head-on the sobering fact that 95 percent of what is built in America is architect-free. This could be the breakout year for prefabricated housing that looks good.

Ever since prefab was developed to cope with housing shortages after World War II, it has been associated more with down-and-dirty than with anything even remotely fabulous. But now there is a groundswell among innovation-minded architects who are applying their interest in experimental materials and all things mobile to affordable housing.

Charles Lazor, a founder of the Blu Dot furniture company in Minneapolis, wants to bring to homes the same affordable cool that distinguishes Blu Dot furnishings. Trained as an architect, he has taken an approach different from standard prefab design, which is based on modules preassembled in a factory then delivered by truck to a site. Mr. Lazor has developed a building system in which each component -- wall panels, glass panels, roof panels, etc. -- is manufactured and delivered from a different source, much in the way cars are assembled from parts made all over the world.

His design, called the Flatpak house, is basically a kit of parts that the prospective buyer selects and customizes from a catalog. And unlike other prefabs, which are traditionally limited in size and height to the dimensions of the flatbed delivery truck, the Flatpak system can make spaces as high, as wide and as complex as desired. (But no arches, please, we're modernists.)

Mr. Lazor is living in the prototype, a basic configuration of two boxes framing a courtyard. The panels of the siding are made of glass, white metal and Douglas fir. Even the foundation is made of precast concrete blocks delivered from a local manufacturer with national franchises.

The 2,600-square-foot two-story house in Minneapolis took six months to build and cost about $140 a square foot, excluding the architect's design fee. (Mr. Lazor said it would cost more like $200 a square foot to build the same house on the East Coast because of labor costs.)

''I wanted a design for all those people who have the taste and the sensibility but are priced out of the high-end product,'' said Mr. Lazor, who is planning to exhibit, and take orders for, a compact version of his Flatpak house at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York in May. (Information: www.flatpakhouse.com.)

But there are many ways to skin a prefab. Werner Aisslinger, a Berlin architect known primarily for an elegantly futuristic chaise lounge made of gel-packs commonly used by the medical industry, has put a space-age spin on the more traditional approach to building prefab. His Loftcube is a shiny white lozenge-shaped living unit on stumpy white legs that is ready to land on any site, be it mountain, seashore or rooftop.

The Loftcube is made of modular panels snapped to a steel frame coated in white fiberglass. As with the Flatpak, buyers will select the unit's interior and exterior walls -- transparent glass, solid panels or wooden louvers -- to get the look they want.

The panels themselves are sized so that the whole house can be knocked down to fit into overseas shipping containers. The Loftcube can be assembled in two days. Its interiors are cleverly flexible, too: a faucet embedded in a Corian wall panel swings two ways for use both in the kitchen and in the bathroom.

After receiving thousands of responses to exhibitions of the Loftcube prototype on rooftops in Berlin and Amsterdam (see www.loftcube .net), Mr. Aisslinger has decided to go into production with the help of Corian, the countertop manufacturer. He hopes to deliver the first Loftcube, weighing approximately 2.5 tons, by April.

Meanwhile there's a seismic shift going on inside the house, too. Those polka-dot felt pillows and retro-Lucite coffee tables are being relegated to the thrift shop for worn out trends, as the craze for midcentury modern turns out to be a warm-up exercise for cooler things to come.

Today's modernists are too restless to fall back on the nostalgia solution. They take what they want from the past, but are confident enough to make up the rest anew. And what they want is an enriched modernism: cool lines set smoldering in textured fabrics or high-tech materials.

''If I see another house with a few random pieces by Eames and a George Nelson credenza, I'll blind myself,'' said Mayer Rus, design editor of House & Garden magazine. ''The escape from the expected leads down many paths,'' he added. ''One looks with increasing desperation for 20th-century designers who haven't already been overexposed. The other way is to take classic modern designs and tweak them.''

That is the road taken by Jamie Drake, a Manhattan interior designer known for giving some hep to traditional, namely patent yellow curtains for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion. Enriched modernism is his new mantra.

For a Connecticut client who wanted something private with pizazz, Mr. Drake is building (with Wayne S. Garrick, a New Haven architect) a one-room structure with a soaring cathedral ceiling painted pale green. The room, on the shore of Long Island Sound, is designed to display the romantically reclusive air of an off-season boathouse.

Besides the celadon ceiling, other bold but simple strokes include a nine-foot coffee table made of bamboo and a concrete floor stained and polished to a leathery finish. There's tweed on the giant Christian Liaigre sofa and seaweed suede on a vintage Vladimir Kagan armchair. A side chair is upholstered in a cotton weave so heavy it looks like rope.

''Modernism today needs emotional texture,'' Mr. Drake said. ''And it's the layering of real textures that keeps it from being brittle and cold.''

Photos: ARCHITECTURE -- This may be the year the prefab housing industry finally takes flight. The contenders include the new Flatpak house, above, a kit of parts that buyers may order and customize from a catalog. (Photo by Cameron Wittig)(pg. F1); SPRING THAW -- The designer Jamie Drake layered a modern house with textures: a concrete floor with a leathery finish, curtains of sheer wool and a Vladimir Kagan chair in seaweed suede. Above, a Flatpak brochure offers all the options. (Photo by C. M. Glover for The New York Times)(pg. F6)